Thursday 28 October 2010

So - multiplayer quests?

So today Fable 3 is out for XBox360 - and I am going to the launch in Game in London like a proper fanboy (and also because I worked on Fable 1 & 2). So while I take a little break to see some old friends - I want to throw out a quick BRAIN BURST as to what the first Pre-Alpha Version Zero of the web interface would be like. Basically I was going to do a website where you can register yourself and get an account for a bunch of "Special People" - like this dude: EpicWin Questmaster. Then those special people can invite a bunch of their "followers", and then through a super basic interface (think GeoCities era websites) they can submit tasks that will be sent out to their followers to do in the app. And since it's a super-pre-alpha-special-people-only feature - the app will probably pop these tasks up in a fairly ugly but functional way for testing out.

I think that's a good "first step" in the technology to do this. Right now I have my old university room-mate/neighbor doing a Ruby-On-Rails network server thingybob to do this. Once we have the authorization and registration framework in that would be VERY exciting!

Any tips or whatever stick them in the comments! GO EPIC FOLLOWERS!

14 comments:

  1. sounds like a great idea to me

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  2. Huh, I was just about to suggest something like this.

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  3. It is quite similar to how chorewars.com operates. Did you check?

    Ruben

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  4. Would be awesome. Google App Engine for practically-free, scalable hosting?

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  5. Yes I saw chore-wars, I need something that will hook up with the iPhone in the back end. And we want to do more "magical" things in the future too :D

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  6. Fable 1 was great!

    Nice news about Epic Win Online!

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  7. If you ever need beta testers, i'm definitely in!

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  8. That sounds awesome! Reminds me of the GiantBomb website where they have "achievements" for things such as watching certain videos or viewing certain pages, and some are only for a limited time.

    I kinda wish I was more creative and could write my 'quests' in a fantasy way because I love reading the Questmaster's quests.

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  9. Probably completely off-topic and maybe something that has been brought up before, but what about a built-in Pomodore timer? I now use an external one, but I think it would make a great addition to the RPG element and fit nicely within the concept of getting things done. Gathering pomodores to complete a mission, deviding a task in several pomodores, etc. Maybe pomodores doesn't sound that Epic enough? Magic orbs?

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  10. While at it: what about gaining XP if you don't do something bad, but loosing some if you do: e.g. No smoking (drinking/surfing/cookies/etc) day, good! 50 points! I smoked today: bad -100 Aaaaahh!. This would work great with daily habits that you want to change. Maybe even with a goal system: didn't smoke the whole week: extra 250 points!!!

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  11. Woah - never heard of Pomodore Timer before! Thanks for some interesting tips!

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  12. +1 for the Pomodore timer from here as well!

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  13. This sounds like a good idea. I'd hope that any user could act as a 'special user' and send out tasks for followers to do? That seems to provide the most flexibility.

    The web interface should feature a simple API that would enable us to build different experiences that integrate with Epic Win.

    Like the Simplenote and Dropbox APIs:
    - http://simplenoteapp.com/api/
    - https://www.dropbox.com/developers

    I'd love to help out with this, so please let me know if there's anything I can do!

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  14. I'm looking for a way to make assignments for others to complete in a way that I can monitor them. Then when they do a good job I know about it too and can give them rewards in the real world.

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